“Oftentimes, you see our soldiers, for instance, going into the battlefield with certain kinds of religious war cries that they have emblazoned on their t-shirts,” he said.

But, Luke Bretherton, associate professor of theological ethics at Duke, said that religion still plays an irreplaceable role in human life, especially when it comes to things like birth, death, one’s place in a community and how to live a moral life.

“This is always, in a sense, part of what we might call religion in terms of how do we make sense of the world within a larger frame of reference.”

The conversation will continue when Jose Casanova speaks on the subject at Duke on February 19th.